Layla Zami

Dr. Layla Zami is a scholar and artist working with words, music, theater, video, and photo art.
She works as an Assistant Producer for the International Human Rights Art Festival (IHRAF). Layla Zami obtained a doctorate in Gender & Cultural Studies from Humboldt University, Berlin, where she received the Outstanding Teacher Award from the Faculty of Humanities and Cultural Studies. Layla also holds an MA from the Paris School of International Affairs, and was a Visiting Research Scholar at Columbia University, as well as a Fellow from the ELES Scholarship Fund. She recently published her dissertation, Contemporary PerforMemory: Moving Through Diasporic Dancescapes in the 21st Century, which discusses the work of Black, Jewish, Palestinian, and Taiwanese choreographers in relation to diasporic corporeality, historical trauma and cultural memory.

Born in Paris, she is rooted in an Afro-Indian-Caribbean and Jewish-Russian-European cultural heritage and blossoms on stage as a resident artist (saxophone, poetry, kalimba, chalumeau) with Oxana Chi. Together, they have performed in NYC, Philadelphia, Berlin, Bielefeld, Hamburg, Paris, Cannes, Istanbul, Taipeh, Solo/Surakarta, and New Delhi. In 2016, Oxana Chi and Layla Zami also initiated the International Symposium-Festival: Moving Memory at Technical University, Berlin. Layla serves on the Dance/NYC’s Symposium Programming Committee and Immigrant Artist Research Initiative.